


She Who Fights Monsters

by anaturalintrovert



Series: Ni No Kuni Fics [7]
Category: Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Anxiety, Canon Divergence-ish, Character Study, Gen, Headcanon, esther angst time lads
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-26
Updated: 2020-11-26
Packaged: 2021-03-10 06:22:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,117
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27728713
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anaturalintrovert/pseuds/anaturalintrovert
Summary: How Esther felt while brokenhearted, and how Shadar broke her heart in the first place.
Relationships: Maru | Esther & Oliver
Series: Ni No Kuni Fics [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1899427
Comments: 1
Kudos: 12





	She Who Fights Monsters

Esther didn’t know exactly how long she’d been feeling like this, but it’d been a good while.

She had vague memories of times before this. Walking outside of the kingdom with her father. Finding Gogo scared in the sand, where a familiar like him clearly didn’t belong. The harp she played in the streets, not even remotely scared of what people thought of her.

And one day, it ended.

The joy, the happiness, it all went away very quickly.

It had to be a couple years back. The Cowlipha herself had gotten sick. Sick with... something. It made her irritable, irrational, terrifying. Esther’s father had insisted on staying inside until whatever seems to be going round died down. Rashaad was no fool - this ailment was clearly magical in nature. Waiting it out would do no good. Regardless, he held out hope that if Esther didn’t make a spectacle of herself, as she had a tendency of doing, she wouldn’t get sick.

Esther found Al Mamoon boring. Yes, it was beautiful and prosperous, but it was boring. So, despite the risks, she left.

It was night. The moon beamed down and the cold clouds rolled in the sky, concealing the stars. People were sleeping. Esther’s footsteps sounded thunderous in her own mind. Gogo softly pattered along beside her. Her goal? Stretching her legs, mostly, given how she was cooped up inside for most of her days. She had her harp, her familiar, and her wits. She knew the Southern Summerlands like the back of her hand so she wasn’t worried. The chance of her being struck with the ailment - being “heartbroken”, as some of her neighbours had called it - was very low.

The desert could chill people to the bone at night. The air was still very dry and the sand was still tiring to walk on. Her feet would sink with every step which made the trek rather laborious. She kept moving anyway because she wasn’t one to be deterred by whatever mother nature threw at her.

Old Smoky would probably look lovely at night.

It was a strange thought, really, but an enticing one to be sure. It was a clear night, it always was, so she could probably look out from the top and see Al Mamoon. She’d be fine. She always was.

And she was already at the foot of Old Smoky so there was no point in turning back. No reason to. Wouldn’t it be impressive to return home having tamed a Little Bighorn? Gogo needed a friend. Sure, she hadn’t perfected her taming techniques, but she’d adopted Gogo without any magic needed and she was sure she could do it again.

It’s important to note that this wasn’t impulse. She’d planned a trip out of Al Mamoon that night, despite her father’s warnings, and she’d come prepared. Deciding to do something off the cuff while having a plan to fall back on was part of the fun. She wasn’t a moron. She was just certain of herself.

It felt weird to be on solid ground again. Her shoes weren’t suited for the rocks that jutted upwards but there were smooth patches of stone to step on if you knew where to look. It wasn’t all that bad. The heat was astounding, too. She had gone from having goosebumps to blinking tears from her eyes since the lava was too hot to look at.

There was a Ruffian grooming itself on a little plateau of rock.

Unfortunately, Esther was far from stealthy. She immediately held her harp ready to play and started brushing her fingers against the strings, much to the dismay of the Ruffian. It hopped up from it’s relaxed position and started barking at her, gnashing its teeth and focussing its attention on her. It lowered itself close to the ground, as though ready to pounce, warning her to start running.

Esther didn’t run. She kept playing her harp and tried to calm the dog down to see if it would be willing to let her pass up to the top.

It went for the legs.

Esther felt the teeth clamp around her ankle. She choked back a yell, shook the creature off, and immediately darted up the volcano, because returning to Al Mamoon when the night was still young would be cowardly. It was chasing her, now, following the slight blood trail that had been left behind by her injury. Her foot was hurting at this point, throbbing with pain, but it was okay. She wasn’t scared. It was nice to feel thrill again.

Unfortunately, she could only run for so long before other creatures caught wind of her presence. Soon, there was a stampede after her. Her foot was killing her.

And, after trying to get to the top of Old Smoky so she could feel proud of herself, she stumbled. She stumbled forward couldn’t stand again. It hurt too much to stand again.

Her harp was a mess. Some of the strings had snapped. She was using it as a shield at this point. She yelled out in defiance.

That defiance seemed to anger someone. That someone loomed over her injured body.

It was all fuzzy. She couldn’t see Shadar clearly. She saw his outline and felt his menace, and she knew that she was as good as dead without having to see the worst case scenario in front of her.

Dizziness was overtaking her. She felt like she was falling a hundred feet. She felt like something had been physically torn out of her. Like a cold, dead hand had pulled at her heart until it broke through the ribs and the skin and was left to freeze in the biting wind. A thousand needles pierced her mind.

She was just thankful for it to be over, initially. She was grateful to have slipped into unconsciousness because at least then she didn’t feel like screaming.

Then she realised that she didn’t feel like anything. That realisation lead her down a spiral of emptiness. She wasn’t scared of this change. She wasn’t scared of her lack of emotion. Even when her father lectured her and cried at her and hugged her, she had been stoic. She saw the face of a man she had known all her life, and yet she could not connect with him even as a stranger.

Rashaad had come to accept that this was life now. That Esther was incurable and that he could only keep her safe. Her complete apathy was better than when he found her on Old Smoky, nearly dead, crying from pain and from loneliness. He wasn’t there to see her smile at the volcano before everything went wrong. He wasn’t there to see her happy.

The rumours spread quickly. Nobody liked being near the sick girl. Esther was apathetic about that. Her heart ached with a loneliness she couldn’t feel. She was very aware that her body was hurting but she was so apathetic that it didn’t register with her.

The Cowlipha wasn’t getting better. None of the other brokenhearted people were getting better. Maybe hearts were too complicated to fix. Maybe they were too big and lively to ever be put back together again.

Esther was apathetic about that.

————————

The boy with the golden heart arrived around noon. It was a few years late, but he arrived regardless. He had a fairy with him. Esther did not care at first.

It was when he approached her father that she was interested.

Interest, that wasn’t new. Esther’s curiosity and cowardliness weren’t mutually exclusive. She wanted to know things. A lot of things. She just never got around to actually finding it out for herself. This interest was different, however. The interest was derived from the fact that she had felt something for the first time.

She felt drive. She felt a burning enthusiasm within her soul. It wasn’t what she needed, by no means was it what she needed, but it felt like something compared to years of nothing. The boy acknowledged her. She was desperate to say hello or offer him a drink or shake his hand, but all the enthusiasm in the world wouldn’t alter the fact that she was scared, nor the fact that she was too acclimated to her own isolation to be able to deal with newcomers.

The fairy tried to sit by her (understandably, since the shade of the babana stall was inviting compared to the hot Al Mamoon sun). She scooted away nervously. She was sat between two barrels, knees brought up to her chest and her arms hugging herself.

Who was Myrtle? The boy was talking about a girl called Myrtle.

Curiosity without courage was useless. She had no clue who Myrtle was and the boy was already gone, along with his fairy companion. Her newfound enthusiasm went with them. Oliver’s locket had that effect on people. He had to put the lid on tighter next time.

Time blended together but suddenly Esther was being dragged up from her sitting position. She hadn’t moved that quickly in a while. It freaked her out. The boy, when did he get back? She hadn’t noticed. Too busy thinking.

“Esther, my name is Oliver. I’m going to help you. I’ve got something to help you.” He was holding her, his hands in hers, making eye contact and encouraging her to step into the sunlight.

“Oli...ver...?”

Those were her last words as a heartbroken young woman.

He stepped away from her and waved his wand to and fro until a glyph illuminated before him. Esther was scared. Esther was shaking and fighting with her frozen body to run. He pointed his wand at her. She could have screamed.

Something warmed her chest. It felt like she was being hugged before it dissipated. She’d been hugged while heartbroken, mostly by her father, but in that state she had only felt two arms wrap around her. There was a difference between two arms and an embrace and Esther could feel that difference deep within her soul in that moment. The world didn’t feel safe but it felt manageable and that made her inner anxieties break away from her heart the most wonderful of ways.

That was not where the joy ended.

Esther was crying. Years of hurt, pain, love, need, curiosity, it all boiled up within her. She remembered how it felt to eat chocolate, how it felt for her hands to be painfully numb from the cold, how petting animals felt reassuring, how playing music ached. She felt present and prepared. For once in her life, she was not retreated into her own mind. She was in Al Mamoon. She was alive and ready to live, excited to live.

She threw her arms around Oliver, thanking him until her throat went hoarse.

However, that wasn’t the end of it. It was never the end of it for Esther.

Oliver had left her alone for a while. He’d gone to rest and fight monsters and do things she’d missed out on for the past few years. She was left alone with her father. She had appreciated him while heartbroken but hadn’t had the capacity to care about him, only able to fret in such a heartbroken state. Now she could say that she loved him.

Love was a very suffocating emotion.

She had proposed the idea of making up for lost time. Helping the boy who had saved her life. She wanted to play music to a new face that wasn’t pitiful of her and her past condition. Her father told her no. Rashaad told her that he would sooner die than watch her struggle on that rock plateau again.

It took some persuading, quite a lot of it actually. She had to prove herself first, that was the agreement. She had to accompany the boy to the Temple of Trials.

If she could do that, she could do anything. Esther didn’t need to be told that anymore. She knew damn well she was as free because she had been in the captivity of her own mind for so long that freedom was blatantly obvious. She proved it, too, she proved herself to be a reliable partner and good friend to Oliver (the latter of which was much more important to the boy).

That brought her to the present moment. The giant creature of fire and molten rock and hatred. The creature that lived in the place she’d lost it all. The creature who symbolised Esther’s own stupidity and mistakes and luck and courage.

She came with the intent to strike the beast down, and she’d do it gracefully.

In that moment, she refused be scared.


End file.
